154 Music poems

The sun is high, the seaside air is sharp, And salty light reveals the Mayan School. The Irish hope their names are on the harp, We see the sheep's advertisement for wool, Boulders are here, to throw against a tarp, From which comes bursting forth a puzzled mule. Perceval seizes it and mounts it, then The blood-dimmed tide recedes and then comes in again. Fateful connections that we make to things Whose functioning's oblivious to our lives! How sidewise news of light from darkness springs, How blue bees buzz from big blooms back to hives And make the honey while the queen bee sings Leadbelly in arrangements by Burl Ives— How long ago I saw the misted pine trees And hoped, no matter how, to get them into poetry! Stendhal, at fifty, gazing as it happened On Rome from the Janiculum, decided That one way he could give his life a stipend Was to suspend his being Amour's fighter And get to know himself. Here he had ripened Accomplished, loved, and lived, was a great writer But never had explored in true detail His childhood and his growing up. So he set sail Composing La Vie de Henry Brulard But in five hundred pages scarcely got Beyond his seventeenth year, for it is hard To take into account what happens here And fit it all onto an index card. Even one moment of it is too hot, Complex and cannibalistically connected To every other, which is what might be expected. Sterne's hero has a greater problem, never Getting much past his birth. I've had a third one. My autobiography, if I should ever Start out to write it, quickly seems a burden An I-will-do-that-the-next-time endeavor. Whatever life I do write's an absurd one As if some crazy person with a knife Cut up and made a jigsaw puzzle of a life. In any case a life that's hardly possible In the conditions that we really live in, Where easy flying leaps to inaccessible Mountainy places where love is a given And misery, if there, infinitesimal, Are quite the norm. Here none by pain is driven That is not curable by the romanza That's kept in readiness to finish any stanza. Whatever, then, I see at this late stage of My life I may or may not have stayed ignorant Of that great book I've strained to write one page of Yet always hoping my page was significant. Be it or not, for me and for the ages I leave it as it is. Yet as a figurant Who has not stopped, I'm writing in addition More lines to clarify my present disposition. One person in a million finds out something Perhaps each fifty years and that is knowledge. Newton, Copernicus, Einstein are cunning. The rest of us just rise and go to college With no more hope to come home with the bunting Than a stray dachshund going through the village. However, what a treat our small successes Of present and of past, at various addresses! To be in all those places where I tarried Too little or too late or bright and early To love again the first woman I married To marvel at such things as melancholy, Sophistication, drums, a baby carriage, A John Cage concert heard at Alice Tully— How my desire when young to be a poet Made me attentive and oblivious every moment! Do you remember Oceanview the Fair? The heights above the river? The canoes? The place we beached them and the grass was bare? Those days the sandbars gave our knees a truce? The crooked line of pantry shelves, with pear And cherry jam? And Pancho, with his noose? Do you remember Full and Half and Empty? Do you remember sorrow standing in the entry? Do you remember thought, and talking plainly? Michel and I went walking after Chartres Cathedral had engaged our spirits mainly By giving us an insight into Barthes. Michel said he was capable of feigning Renewed intentions of the soul's deep part, Like this cathedral's artificial forces That press a kind of artless thought into our faces. And yet— The moor is dark beneath the moon. The porcupine turns over on its belly And new conceptions rap at the cocoon. Civilization, dealing with us fairly, For once, releases its Erectheion Of understanding, which consoles us, nearly. Later we study certain characteristics That may give us a better chance with the statistics. How much I'd like to live the whole thing over, But making some corrections as I go! To be a better husband and a father, Be with my babies on a sled in snow. By twenty I'd have understood my mother And by compassion found a way to know What separates the what-I-started-out-as From what-I-sometimes-wished-I-was-when-in-the-mountains. To be once more the one who what was worthy Of courtship courted—it was quite as stressful As trying to, er, as they say, give birth to A poem and as often unsuccessful, But it was nice to be sublime and flirty With radiant girls, and, in some strange way, restful. I could be everything I wasn't usually— And then to get somebody else to feel it mutually! In poems the same problem or a similar. Desire of course not only to do old things But things unheard of yet by nuns or visitors And of the melancholy finch be co-finch In singing songs with such a broad parameter That seamstresses would stare, forget to sew things, Astronauts quit the sky, athletes the stadium To hear them, and the rest of what they hear be tedium. Such wild desires, I think it's recognizable Are part and parcel of the Human Image And in a way, I'd say, no less predictable Than Popeye's feelings for a can of spinach. Yet if we're set on course by the Invisible, All pre-determined, what about the language That teases me each morning with its leanings Toward the Unprogrammed Altitudes beyond its meanings? Are you, O particles, O atoms, nominatives Like Percevals and Stendhals, set in motion By some Ordaining Will that is definitive? Is this invading chill and high emotion, This tendency to know one is regenerative, Is this, all, tidal take-home like the ocean? Be what you may, my thanks for your society Through the long life I've had, your jokes and your variety, The warmth you've shown in giving me a temperature That I can live with, and the strength you've shared with me In arms and legs—and for your part in literature, What can I say? It is as if life stared at me And kissed my lips and left it as a signature. Thank you for that, and thank you for preparing me For love itself, and friendship, its co-agent. Thank you for being this, and for its inspiration.

How could I not? Have seen a man walk up to a piano and both survive. Have turned the exterminator away. Seen lipstick on a wine glass not shatter the wine. Seen rainbows in puddles. Been recognized by stray dogs. I believe reality is approximately 65% if. All rivers are full of sky. Waterfalls are in the mind. We all come from slime. Even alpacas. I believe we’re surrounded by crystals. Not just Alexander Vvedensky. Maybe dysentery, maybe a guard’s bullet did him in. Nonetheless. Nevertheless I believe there are many kingdoms left. The Declaration of Independence was written with a feather. A single gem has throbbed in my chest my whole life even though even though this is my second heart. Because the first failed, such was its opportunity. Was cut out in pieces and incinerated. I asked. And so was denied the chance to regard my own heart in a jar. Strange tangled imp. Wee sleekit in red brambles. You know what it feels like to hold a burning piece of paper, maybe even trying to read it as the flames get close to your fingers until all you’re holding is a curl of ash by its white ear tip yet the words still hover in the air? That’s how I feel now.

sometimes the deaf hear better than the blind some men when they first heard her sing were only attracted to the flower in her hair

for Jim Hendrix, hoodoo from his natural born He frightens all the witches and the dragons in their lair He cues the clear blue daylight and He gives the night its dare He flaps His wings for warning and He struts atop a mare for when He crows they quiver and when He comes they flee In His coal black plumage and His bright red crown and His golden beaked fury and His calculated frown in His webbed footed glory He sends Jehovah down for when He crows they quiver and when He comes they flee O they dance around the fire and they boil the gall of wolves and they sing their strange crude melodies and play their weirder tunes and the villagers close their windows and the grave- yard starts to heave and the cross wont help their victims and the screaming fills the night and the young girls die with open eyes and the skies are lavender light but when He crows they quiver and when He comes they flee Well the sheriff is getting desperate as they go their nature’s way killing cattle smothering infants slaughtering those who block their way and the countryside swarms with numbness as their magic circle grows but when He crows they tremble and when He comes they flee Posting hex-signs on their wagons simple worried farmers pray passing laws and faking justice only feed the witches brew violet stones are rendered helpless drunken priests are helpless too but when He crows they quiver and when He comes they flee We have seen them in their ritual we have catalogued their crimes we are weary of their torture but we cannot bring them down their ancient hoodoo enemy who does the work, the trick, strikes peril in their dead fiend’s hearts and pecks their flesh to quick love Him feed Him He will never let you down for when He crows they quiver and when He comes they frown

When I got old enough I asked my mother, to her surprise, to tell me what she did with my eyes. She balked and stalled, sounding unsure for the first time I could remember. It was the tender way she held my face and kissed where tears should have rolled that told me I’d asked of her the almost impossible— to recount my blinding tale, to tell what became of the rest of me. She took me by the hand and led me to a small sapling that stood not much taller than me. I could smell the green marrow of its promise reaching free of the soil like a song from Earth’s royal, dirty mouth. Then Mother told me how she, newly freed, had prayed like a slave through the night when the surgeon took my eyes to save my fevered life, then got off her knees come morning to take the severed parts of me for burial—right there beneath that small tree. They fed the roots, climbed through its leaves to soak in sunlight . . . and so, she told me, I can see. When the wind rustles up and cools me down, when the earth shakes with footsteps and when the sound of birdcalls stirs forests like the black and white bustling ’neath my fingertips I am of the light and shade of my tree. Now, ask me how tall that tree of mine has grown to be after all this time— it touches a place between heaven and here. And I shudder when I hear the earth’s wind in my bones through the bones of that boxed-up swarm of wood, bird and bee: I let it loose . . . and beyond me.

Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav'ns joy, Sphear-born harmonious Sisters, Voice, and Vers, Wed your divine sounds, and mixt power employ Dead things with inbreath'd sense able to pierce, And to our high-rais'd phantasie present, That undisturbèd Song of pure content, Ay sung before the saphire-colour'd throne To him that sits theron With Saintly shout, and solemn Jubily, Where the bright Seraphim in burning row Their loud up-lifted Angel trumpets blow, And the Cherubick host in thousand quires Touch their immortal Harps of golden wires, With those just Spirits that wear victorious Palms, Hymns devout and holy Psalms Singing everlastingly; That we on Earth with undiscording voice May rightly answer that melodious noise; As once we did, till disproportion'd sin Jarr'd against natures chime, and with harsh din Broke the fair musick that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’d In perfect Diapason, whilst they stood In first obedience, and their state of good. O may we soon again renew that Song And keep in tune with Heav'n, till God ere long To his celestial consort us unite, To live with him, and sing in endles morn of light.

Let the musicians begin, Let every instrument awaken and instruct us In love’s willing river and love’s dear discipline: We wait, silent, in consent and in the penance Of patience, awaiting the serene exaltation Which is the liberation and conclusion of expiation. Now may the chief musician say: “Lust and emulation have dwelt amoung us Like barbarous kings: have conquered us: Have inhabited our hearts: devoured and ravished —With the savage greed and avarice of fire— The substance of pity and compassion.”

Oh, I would have these tongues oracular Dip into silence, tease no more, let be! They madden, like some choral of the free Gusty and sweet against a prison-bar. To earth the boast that her gold empires are, The menace of delicious death to me, Great Undesign, strong as by God’s decree, Piercing the heart with beauty from afar! Music too winning to the sense forlorn! Of what angelic lineage was she born, Bred in what rapture?—These her sires and friends: Censure, Denial, Gloom, and Hunger’s throe. Praised be the Spirit that thro’ thee, Schubert! so Wrests evil unto wholly heavenly ends.

(after the painting Á rbol de Blues by Roberto Valadez) The hands of this telling tree pull him from the cobalt bowl sky, bring Jimmy back to the ruins of Maxwell Street hunched in dusk. He stood where strings intersected frets like tracks meeting ties on the Illinois Central’s passage from the Mississippi Delta, then followed the bread crumbs of troubadours to this steel city. Twelve-hour shifts beckoned mexicanos north on the Union Pacific from Piedras Negras to Pilsen, Back of the Yards. How many grandparents, mothers and fathers, pounded stake into soil, snuck or were shoved into boxcars, leapt onto the train’s iron rungs as it shuddered along the rails to foundries where they poured molten metal, faced hot licks of the blast furnace’s growl and hiss? How many lugged themselves north to slaughterhouses that drooled rank puddles at their feet? This, so sons and daughters might step off into another era, choose instruments of wood and metal, axes of their own timbre. This so Jimmy might mix his own palette— tune each turquoise pitch and purple tone into an electric blues old as corridos, but new to the mexicanos who came each Sunday to the market at Maxwell. New to the ears of Roberto, a boy, who would keep his ranchera rhythms close as a pair of old jeans but grow into the blues as he listened to the heirs of Papa Jackson— Johnny Young, Howlin’ Wolf, Nighthawk and Maxwell Jimmy. Now Roberto sits in overalls at an easel, splits the hairs of his brush over how to compose this ofrenda, this homage. How to take Jimmy back in time to the market whose merchants once hustled with tricks for trade ancient as Africa, as Toltec Mexico, Maxwell, whose live blues bands and car radios belting norteño mixes made every Sunday a session. How to take Jimmy back to Maxwell’s gathering spot where he guzzles from an aluminum garden blooming atop his amp, swings his ax— fingers climbing its trunk, plucking twigs— while our feet tap the roots of this wailing tree. Notes skip through alleys of his voice like gravel pinging off windshields, lift a pitch high enough to singe the autumn sky— cousin to the red and green gritos of the barrio only blocks away. Twelve bars spin like metal rims, stack like hubcaps, chords crackling in the tin barrels of his laughter. When the people gather, he sputters, What did the one-eyed woman say? and waits for them to peer into the devil’s draw of his eyes before he roars, Where is my one-eyed man? But we barely get to the punch line, to the end of a set, before the mayor swings his ax, a claw that rips this árbol de blues up by its roots; before Chicago swings its wrecking ball to level homes, stores, restaurants, bars; before troops graffiti-blast, scrub and cinch-sack it all, but one empty wall where someone has scrawled Jimmy’s name among the others in this hall of fame: Willie, Hound Dog, Honey Boy, Sal, the many legends who’ve shared the marrow of their music, of Santana’s hearty soup with the bones still in it steaming with sabor and sometimes weeping.

The high school kids are so beautiful in their lavender blouses and crisp white shirts. They open their mouths to sing with that far-off stare they had looking out from the crib. Their voices lift up from the marble bed of the high altar to the blue endless ceiling of heaven as depicted in the cloudy dome— and we—as the parents—crane our necks to see our children and what is above us— and ahead of us—until the end when we are invited up to sing with them—sopranos and altos—tenors and basses—to sing the great Hallelujah Chorus—and I’m standing with the other stunned and gray fathers—holding our sheet music— searching for our parts—and we realize— our voices are surprisingly rich—experienced— For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth— and how do we all know to come in at exactly the right moment?—Forever and ever— and how can it not seem that we shall reign forever and ever—in one voice with our beautiful children—looking out into all those lights.